The Lost Art of Doing Nothing Badly
How to rest when doing nothing makes you feel guilty
I can’t plan a long travel journey without immediately thinking: How am I going to use the time productively?
So when my hubby booked a 6-hour bus journey going from Oaxaca to Puebla, Mexico, you bet that I had the most productive plan for it.
I made sure all my files were available offline on my MacBook. I had a week of Substack Notes to write. 2 newsletters to finish. Emails for my LegalTech job to draft. All types of cables to charge my devices while on the bus. A killer playlist to get me in the zone.
How romantic! The life of a coach and content creator on the road. Right?
Wrong. I lasted about 30 minutes.
Then I closed the laptop, stared out of the window, got annoyed there was no 5G, listened to the killer playlist, opened the laptop again, achieved very little, closed it again, and spent the rest of the journey doing several things (badly) while doing nothing. Counting the minutes until we arrived (the playlist remained excellent, I am a DJ, after all).
The scenery was absolutely stunning too, which somehow made me even more annoyed with myself for not being able to simply look at it and enjoy it like a normal person.
I’m a health coach, I write about wellbeing, I speak about mental wellness, and being present and mindful.
The problem wasn’t that I had failed to work, the problem was that I could not let the time become anything else.
I had already assigned those 6 hours a purpose, so once the work stopped happening, the journey felt wasted.
Looking out of the window was not rest, it was evidence that I should be getting more done.
I think a lot of us do this.
We are fine with stopping, but only when stopping has a job.
Rest so you can perform better tomorrow.
Take a walk to clear your head.
Meditate to improve your focus.
Read something educational.
Lie down, but only if it’s while listening to a podcast that will make you more informed, emotionally intelligent and also possibly fluent in Español.
Even the pause needs an output.
I’ve written about this before, but bringing podcasts in the shower was probably not my proudest to be honest.
I’m so allergic to the productivity bros, but I also realise how much of the bullshit I’ve internalised and need to unlearn.
And the wellness industry has not exactly helped, right?
Rest now comes with sleep scores, recovery metrics, breathwork green streaks and evening routines with 10 steps and a scented candle.
Somehow, we have managed to turn switching off into another area in which we can underperform.
Then there is the other version of stopping, where you collapse onto the sofa and lose 2 hours to your phone. I’ve done that too, you can read about it here.
I am not here to judge or prosecute scrolling. Sometimes watching complete nonsense is exactly what the evening requires (Netflix dating shows being my favourite not-so-guilty, guilty pleasures).
But I know the difference between 20 minutes that gives my brain a break and 2 hours that leaves me blinking into the darkness with a sore neck and no idea what I have been looking at.
The difference isn’t whether the activity is worthy enough to “count” as rest.
It is how you feel afterwards.
In 2015, over 18,000 people from 134 countries participated in the Rest Test.
The test asked individuals which activities they considered restful and the most popular answers were painfully ordinary ones: reading, being in nature, being alone, listening to music, doing nothing in particular.
Notice how there’s no fancy protocol or measurable return here, just old school ways to chill. None of these require you to produce anything either.
Which is also why doing nothing can feel soooo uncomfortable at first.
When we’re used to filling every pocket of empty space with something, a pause doesn’t immediately feel peaceful.
It’ll likely feel boring, restless or vaguely wrong at first.
So the answer isn’t to become brilliant at resting, it’s to be ok being slightly bad at resting.
Allowing yourself to stare out of the window without a podcast in the background.
Letting yourself listen to music without pairing it with a task.
Or in my case, taking a shower without feeling the urge to use the time to learn something.
So I did waste those 6 hours to Puebla. Just not by failing to write the newsletters.
The Unwritten Check-In
This week’s bare minimum: Do 1 restful thing that produces absolutely nothing. No learning, tracking, documenting and definitely no earning it first.
Ask yourself: What would feel restful if it didn’t have to be useful?
Noemie x
P.S. If your summer has turned into travel days, screens and “I’ll just rest when things calm down”, check out my Summer-Proof workshop. It’s free, 45 minutes, and helps you build a few anchors that survive heat, travel and a 10pm dinner.
Key Sources
Claudia Hammond and Gemma Lewis, ‘The Rest Test: Preliminary Findings from a Large-Scale International Survey on Rest’, in Felicity Callard, Kimberley Staines and James Wilkes (eds), The Restless Compendium (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK453237/>
Wellcome, ‘Results of World’s Largest Survey on Rest to Be Announced’ (press release, 27 September 2016) <https://wellcome.org/press-release/results-worlds-largest-survey-rest-be-announced>
Noemie Mooney is an ACE Certified Health Coach, ICF-trained Behaviour Change Specialist, certified yoga instructor, and creator of the MAKE SPACE Method™. Trained in design thinking at the Stanford d.school, she writes Unwritten Potential, a newsletter about evidence-based wellbeing, sustainable habits, mental wellbeing, and health behaviour change for smart, health-curious people who want to feel their best without making it a full-time job.